I was just trying to be conservative, which is why I pull the $5k out of thin air.
When I started up, I was given a ~$3500 budget for computer stuff and office furniture. Then we bought me a laptop for when I was on travel, which cost about $1200 IIRC.
Aside from that, there's the cost of having us travel to some random hotel for company meetings about 3 times/year. That probably averages about $800 per person per trip.
If/when we're more flush with cash, we may invest in something akin to large shared whiteboards. It would probably be a win in terms of productivity, but we'll save that experiment for a time when we can more easily afford for it to not pan out.
I've been telecommuting for the past two years, for a virtual company, and I hope I never need to give it up.
There are some things I miss, in particular (a) my wife not needing to keep our kids somewhat quiet during school vacations, and (b) having a ready-made social life due to being cooped up with coworkers.
But after working out some of the kinks, and with a just a little extra self-discipline, it's so, so worth it.
Even if an employer needs to pay and $5k/year to cover telecommute-specific costs (such as decent video conference equipment, etc.), it seems it must be a win-win for just about everyone involved. (At least for software development jobs. Not sure about other kinds.)
C's "switch / case" statement is bush-league. I once worked with a FORTRAN77 program that used a big "indexed goto" statement. My team almost got tattoos to commemorate surviving that one.
Rhetorical questions of course. Religion by definition cannot be objectively true because it depends of belief in something which isn't falsifiable. If it cannot in principle be measured or observed (with past, existing or future technology) then it cannot be true.
I think your statement is mistaken. Here's why:
Objective truth refers to a proposition (e.g., "God exists") which is true without regards to the person making the statement, holding that belief, etc. I totally agree that the most important question regarding a religion is whether or not it's objectively true.
I think your mistake comes from your apparent premise that (a proposition P is not falsifiable) implies (P is not objectively true). If that's what you meant, then there are numerous critiques of that logic which I'm not going to enumerate here. Some good starting points in case you're interested: Here, here, and here.
If we're talking about the falsifiability of Judeo-Christian religions specifically, here are a few aspects which you might consider objective but not (obviously) falsifiable:
(1) They involve historical claims: The Israelites followed a column of smoke/flame through the desert after fleeing Egypt; Jesus was dead, and then three days later was alive; etc. These are objective claims, in that they're true or false regardless of who's thinking about them. But they're not obviously falsifiable, because they're supposedly one-off historical events. I.e., there's nothing in Jewish / Christian theology that would lead one to think he/she could formulate an experiment to test if these events happened in the past. The historical method is perhaps the best we can ever do for this category of claim.
(2) Claims about events which cannot be forced to happen during one's lifetime: for example, claims about what a person would experience after death. (I don't mean after pseudo-death, like having no heartbeat for 5 minutes. I mean perma-death dead.) These claims are not falsifiable in any useful sense of the word, because the theology generally indicates that a person will be able to observe them only after death, which is a bit too late to be useful.
I think there might be some aspects of Christianity's claims which are subjective and falsifiable, but I'd want to leave it to a well-educated Christian to enumerate / defend those.
(Here we begin a predictably unresolved debate about religion, rationity, what constitutes evidence, limits of human ability to reason soundly, straw men, etc.)
But I wonder if there are a few alternative explanations as well:
(a) Mercedes had added cheaper cars to its lineup in 2016, compared to what they offered in 1969. (After all, in the U.S. they do have a long-earned reputation as a luxury brand.)
(b) The ratio of food-costs to car-costs in general has changed significantly over those decades. (I don't think this is likely.)
If I've used the Inflation Calculator correctly, then the cumulative inflation of the U.S. dollar from 1969 to 2016 is 554.6%. And so that $13k Mercedes-Benz in 1969 would cost ~ $85k in 2016. Much more than the $30k you cited.
The Israeli settlements are mostly populated and supported by secular Jews, including immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe who came to Israel for economic opportunity, not religion.
I hesitate to call any piece of software open source unless its maintainers affirmatively resign all rights to software patents that are even remotely relevant.
Maybe if she was your wife rather than your girlfriend, the applicable laws regarding post-divorce asset division and alimony would me staying home seem less risky to her?
Having a proper constitution has not prevented the United States suffering a power-grab by the central (i.e., federal) government.
Our Constitution's 10th Amendment, which was part of the Constitution from the beginning, was supposed to limit the federal government to a small set of specifically enumerated powers. Unfortunately, what we've seen over time is that our Federal and Supreme Courts have generally permitted the Federal government to encroach into State's rights almost without limit.
One avenue for this is that the courts apparently see no practical limitations on the Federal government's ability to tax citizens, behaviors, goods. Two examples:
Example 1: The Federal government's mechanism for taking over control of primary/secondary education curricula and teaching methods: (a) give grants to those schools only if they teach in the manner desired by the Federal government, plus (b) set the federal-level taxation rate so high that few citizens / states can afford to educate their children well without getting back the money via the grants mentioned in (a).
Example 2: The Federal government control over health-insurance markets from individual states involved (in addition to some other tactics) (a) taxing individual citizens who did not have health insurance, and (b) giving health-insurance stipends to individual citizens based on income.
There's some disagreement amongst Americans as to whether or not our civil war (1861-1865) was about the southern states pushing back on the encroachment on their rights as enumerated by our Constitution. To the extent that it was, one lesson Europeans might draw is that a compact which starts as voluntary and is supposedly limited by a formal constitution, does not necessarily prevent it eventually becoming a union held together by force. It reminds me of the difference between a voluntary partner in marriage, vs. being a sex slave.
This is why I'm happy for the Britons that they escaped before it was too late.
"Why does this keep happening, and what is our government doing about it?"
If one accepts that all information may be freely shared unless specific restrictions apply, and if the people named in the database hold no such restrictions on those data, then what's the problem?
Netflix is also starting to cut it close as far as not offering me enough content to be useful.
Back in the old days, before they had competition, I could pretty much count on them having episodes of any older TV show I care about, and also lots of anime I hadn't yet seen (English-dubbed "Bleach", "Freezing", "M*A*S*H", etc.)
But lately, they're in the habit of dropping some of those shows, or at least of failing to carry recent seasons.
I'd gladly pay a few more bucks per month for them to remedy that.
Slashdot Mirror
I was just trying to be conservative, which is why I pull the $5k out of thin air.
When I started up, I was given a ~$3500 budget for computer stuff and office furniture. Then we bought me a laptop for when I was on travel, which cost about $1200 IIRC.
Aside from that, there's the cost of having us travel to some random hotel for company meetings about 3 times/year. That probably averages about $800 per person per trip.
If/when we're more flush with cash, we may invest in something akin to large shared whiteboards. It would probably be a win in terms of productivity, but we'll save that experiment for a time when we can more easily afford for it to not pan out.
I've been telecommuting for the past two years, for a virtual company, and I hope I never need to give it up.
There are some things I miss, in particular (a) my wife not needing to keep our kids somewhat quiet during school vacations, and (b) having a ready-made social life due to being cooped up with coworkers.
But after working out some of the kinks, and with a just a little extra self-discipline, it's so, so worth it.
Even if an employer needs to pay and $5k/year to cover telecommute-specific costs (such as decent video conference equipment, etc.), it seems it must be a win-win for just about everyone involved. (At least for software development jobs. Not sure about other kinds.)
C's "switch / case" statement is bush-league. I once worked with a FORTRAN77 program that used a big "indexed goto" statement. My team almost got tattoos to commemorate surviving that one.
Every time the C++ standards committee get together.
I think your statement is mistaken. Here's why:
Objective truth refers to a proposition (e.g., "God exists") which is true without regards to the person making the statement, holding that belief, etc. I totally agree that the most important question regarding a religion is whether or not it's objectively true.
I think your mistake comes from your apparent premise that (a proposition P is not falsifiable) implies (P is not objectively true). If that's what you meant, then there are numerous critiques of that logic which I'm not going to enumerate here. Some good starting points in case you're interested: Here, here, and here.
If we're talking about the falsifiability of Judeo-Christian religions specifically, here are a few aspects which you might consider objective but not (obviously) falsifiable:
(1) They involve historical claims: The Israelites followed a column of smoke/flame through the desert after fleeing Egypt; Jesus was dead, and then three days later was alive; etc. These are objective claims, in that they're true or false regardless of who's thinking about them. But they're not obviously falsifiable, because they're supposedly one-off historical events. I.e., there's nothing in Jewish / Christian theology that would lead one to think he/she could formulate an experiment to test if these events happened in the past. The historical method is perhaps the best we can ever do for this category of claim.
(2) Claims about events which cannot be forced to happen during one's lifetime: for example, claims about what a person would experience after death. (I don't mean after pseudo-death, like having no heartbeat for 5 minutes. I mean perma-death dead.) These claims are not falsifiable in any useful sense of the word, because the theology generally indicates that a person will be able to observe them only after death, which is a bit too late to be useful.
I think there might be some aspects of Christianity's claims which are subjective and falsifiable, but I'd want to leave it to a well-educated Christian to enumerate / defend those.
The Kuma Satra?
Which country are you call in a theocracy? If you mean the US, I'm curious why you think it is one.
And if you'd gladly love elsewhere, why don't you? Wouldn't that be... "rational "?
I'm not sure we can claim that supporting unproductive members of society is, or is not, "logical" unless we k ow what the society's end goal is.
And I'm not aware of any means by which science or mere rationality can determine such a thing.
Not if some religion is true.
(Here we begin a predictably unresolved debate about religion, rationity, what constitutes evidence, limits of human ability to reason soundly, straw men, etc.)
Agreed. Someone at Microsoft found another attack vector. That is all.
Why are you calling those positions "new"???
Sir, I would ask you to never combine the concepts "fuck" and "Hillary Clinton" in the same discussion.
It's a joke that can take your and my property, freedom, or life, likely without consequence. So as jokes go, it's not that funny.
That was my initial thought as well.
But I wonder if there are a few alternative explanations as well:
(a) Mercedes had added cheaper cars to its lineup in 2016, compared to what they offered in 1969. (After all, in the U.S. they do have a long-earned reputation as a luxury brand.)
(b) The ratio of food-costs to car-costs in general has changed significantly over those decades. (I don't think this is likely.)
If I've used the Inflation Calculator correctly, then the cumulative inflation of the U.S. dollar from 1969 to 2016 is 554.6%. And so that $13k Mercedes-Benz in 1969 would cost ~ $85k in 2016. Much more than the $30k you cited.
The Israeli settlements are mostly populated and supported by secular Jews, including immigrants from Russia and Eastern Europe who came to Israel for economic opportunity, not religion.
"s/economic opportunity/living space/"
I hesitate to call any piece of software open source unless its maintainers affirmatively resign all rights to software patents that are even remotely relevant.
A really skilled troll does it in a controversial way that draws some supporters as well, creating a major flame war.
Just calling someone an idiot does not qualify.
That's a good point. And someone that clever could probably just write an Emacs macro to do the trolling for him.
I wish them the best, but I fear for their future.
Perhaps my sample size is too small, but my impression is that marriages that start with such frivolous wedding ceremonies tend to not last that long.
Maybe if she was your wife rather than your girlfriend, the applicable laws regarding post-divorce asset division and alimony would me staying home seem less risky to her?
Are these grits in your pants sir??????
No, I'm not pleased to see you, that actually is a beowulf cluster in my pocket.
Sir, why would you even think it was okay to bring four dead woodchucks onto a plane?
What have you got in mind? We're game.
Having a proper constitution has not prevented the United States suffering a power-grab by the central (i.e., federal) government.
Our Constitution's 10th Amendment, which was part of the Constitution from the beginning, was supposed to limit the federal government to a small set of specifically enumerated powers. Unfortunately, what we've seen over time is that our Federal and Supreme Courts have generally permitted the Federal government to encroach into State's rights almost without limit.
One avenue for this is that the courts apparently see no practical limitations on the Federal government's ability to tax citizens, behaviors, goods. Two examples:
Example 1: The Federal government's mechanism for taking over control of primary/secondary education curricula and teaching methods: (a) give grants to those schools only if they teach in the manner desired by the Federal government, plus (b) set the federal-level taxation rate so high that few citizens / states can afford to educate their children well without getting back the money via the grants mentioned in (a).
Example 2: The Federal government control over health-insurance markets from individual states involved (in addition to some other tactics) (a) taxing individual citizens who did not have health insurance, and (b) giving health-insurance stipends to individual citizens based on income.
There's some disagreement amongst Americans as to whether or not our civil war (1861-1865) was about the southern states pushing back on the encroachment on their rights as enumerated by our Constitution. To the extent that it was, one lesson Europeans might draw is that a compact which starts as voluntary and is supposedly limited by a formal constitution, does not necessarily prevent it eventually becoming a union held together by force. It reminds me of the difference between a voluntary partner in marriage, vs. being a sex slave.
This is why I'm happy for the Britons that they escaped before it was too late.
If one accepts that all information may be freely shared unless specific restrictions apply, and if the people named in the database hold no such restrictions on those data, then what's the problem?
Netflix is also starting to cut it close as far as not offering me enough content to be useful.
Back in the old days, before they had competition, I could pretty much count on them having episodes of any older TV show I care about, and also lots of anime I hadn't yet seen (English-dubbed "Bleach", "Freezing", "M*A*S*H", etc.)
But lately, they're in the habit of dropping some of those shows, or at least of failing to carry recent seasons.
I'd gladly pay a few more bucks per month for them to remedy that.